--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Con Lehane" <con@...>
wrote:>>> Good take on Chester Himes, Al. I think his view of
the absurd--in
the Camus sense--is> what's distinctive about the Coffin Ed Johnson Grave
Digger Jones
books. My own humble> opinion is that the books were a kind of burlesque
of the Hammett
(Spillaine) view of the> world. But then, I'm usually wrong in my
opinions.>

I don't think you are wrong. I can see how a person who sees
the world as a hopelessly wrong place can turn to very dark
humor and grotesquerie in order to tell his stories. I was
thinking exactly this the other day, while reading an
extraordinary novel (you could call it a futuristic fantasy
or nightmare) by the great Manuel de Pedrolo. You can feel
that the guy was sending up the Spain of his day, but within
the brutality of what he describes (without placing the novel
anywhere recognizable), there is a burlesque element that
reminds me strongly of Himes. Pedrolo translated many noir
and hardboiled novels, and I think he absorbed stylistic
elements.

This particular novel, whose Catalan title is _Totes les
b賴ies de cಲega_ (All the Beasts of Burden, literally)
deserves to be widely known, together with his three straight
noir novels, all of which I reread recently.

While Pedrolo's work has been translated into Spanish, German
and French, I don't know of English translations,
unfortunately. I hope some day this situation is
remedied.